July 31, 2026

Eating Out Abroad With Coeliac Disease

Coeliac disease is harder to communicate in a restaurant than most food allergies, for a reason that has nothing to do with language: the word “gluten” is understood, but what it lives in often is not.

The specific problem with gluten

Say “no peanuts” and a kitchen knows what to remove. Say “no gluten” and you are relying on the kitchen knowing that it covers wheat, barley, rye, spelt, most soy sauce, many stocks, a lot of sausages, and the flour someone used to stop the dough sticking.

In many places, “gluten-free” is understood as “no bread”. That is where the misses come from.

Two things help:

Name the grains as well as the category. Wheat, barley, rye, spelt.
Name the sneaky forms directly — flour used for dusting or thickening, breadcrumbs in a sauce, shared frying oil, soy sauce.

The cross-contact questions worth asking

Coeliac disease is triggered by amounts far below what a kitchen thinks of as “an ingredient”. These are the four that matter most:

Is the fryer shared? Chips cooked in the same oil as breaded food are the single most common miss.
Is the pasta water shared? Gluten-free pasta boiled in the same pot is not gluten-free.
Is the grill or toaster shared?
Is flour used to thicken the sauce?

Asking these four specifically works better than asking whether something “is gluten-free”, because they are answerable facts rather than a judgement.

The country picture varies a lot

Italy is unusually good. Coeliac disease is screened for in childhood, restaurants often carry certification, and staff generally understand cross-contact.
Spain, Portugal, Germany, the Nordics are broadly well-informed, with growing certification.
France has good labelling but a bread-centred food culture; expect more explaining.
Croatia, Poland, the Balkans are improving quickly, though awareness is thinner outside larger cities and tourist areas.
Outside Europe, assume nothing transfers. In much of Asia, wheat in soy sauce is so routine that “no wheat” is genuinely surprising.

Local coeliac associations often publish restaurant lists and their own translation cards, and they are usually better than anything generic.

Carry it in writing

For coeliac disease specifically, a written card is worth more than for most allergens, because the message is longer than one word. A verbal “no gluten” survives one retelling badly; the list of grains plus the fryer question does not survive at all.

Our free allergy card generator prints in 14 languages at wallet size, with the cross-contact request included. No signup.

Packaged food is the easy part

Supermarkets abroad are more forgiving than restaurants: the EU’s 14-allergen rule means cereals containing gluten are emphasised on every packaged product, whatever the language. A scanner like Allervibe reads that data and matches it for you, which removes the translation step in the aisle.

More on the allergen itself on the gluten page.

The realistic expectation

Most meals go fine, and the ones that do not usually trace to a shared fryer or a dusting of flour rather than a plate of bread. Ask the specific questions, carry the card, and trust the kitchen that asks you something back.